Diet's Blog

U.S. News & World Report’s Best Diets 2015, released earlier this week, ranked 35 diet plans. But the No. 1 diet may surprise you. The “Best Diets Overall” winner (for the fifth year in a row): the DASH diet.

The DASH diet—or Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension—was developed to combat high blood pressure (hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure). So it certainly doesn’t fall into the realm of trendy diets like Paleo or the Alkaline Diet. To earn a spot on the “Best Diets” list, the diet plan has to help with weight loss and diabetes (research shows the DASH diet does)—as well as be easy to follow and nutritious (check and check). Their panel of experts, which included EatingWell advisors David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., and Brian Wansink, Ph.D., gave it top billing in part because it scored well in the heart health...

Ooh, the Fitbit. I’m completely addicted to mine. Thanks to my Fitbit, I’ve discovered I’m a bit of a sloth on nonexercise days. So now I’m the first person in my house to offer to run upstairs and grab whatever anyone needs. More steps!

I say the Fitbit—and other wearable trackers—are so worth it because they make you aware of your activity level (or lack thereof) and motivate you to move more.

There’s science to back me up, too: research shows that tracking your activity and/or being motivated to work out helps shed pounds.

Better yet, one study showed that simply wearing a tracker could help you lose as much weight as if you regularly attended in-person weight-loss sessions.

But if you take the calorie-burn number too literally you could end up gaining weight. How is this possible?

Sugar seems to be everywhere these days—in foods that taste sweet and even foods that don’t. It sweetens up everything from yogurts and coffee drinks to sauces and crackers to pizzas and salad dressings. Sugar goes by many names, but whether it’s cane sugar, syrup, honey or fructose, it pretty much gets treated the same way by your body.

Here are some of the 60-plus different names for sugar that may appear on your food labels.

If you’re trying to slim down, you might be entirely cutting out some of your favorite (perhaps not-so-healthy) foods—thinking that not eating treats will help you lose weight.

However, restricting foods that you enjoy can actually make you overindulge in them later, potentially undoing all your recent healthy-eating efforts, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. You might not be successful at losing weight, despite your best intentions.

The lesson? You can keep your favorite foods around while slimming down. Here’s how to keep those favorite foods in your diet.

Staying healthy while you’re flying can be challenging (especially if you’re stuck in the air during mealtime).

Luckily, it’s getting easier, as more airports are carrying healthy snacks like plain yogurt, nuts and dried fruit. With a little advance planning, you can pack your own healthy snacks—but that’s not always an option.

To help you make healthy choices at 30,000 feet, we scoured airline menus for nutritious airplane food that would fight off mid-flight hunger pangs. And although airplane food has a bad reputation, we were pleasantly surprised to find airlines carrying healthy in-flight eating options.

Our menu picks include a balance of healthy proteins and some healthy fats, both of which keep you from getting hungry better than sugar and other refined carbs. We also looked for dishes with whole grains, fruits and vegetables—...